The Oxford History of World Cinema

soon emerged as a premier format, reserved for big-budget
blockbusters, which could be shown at top prices on a
roadshow basis in the largest, most exclusive theatres. It
led the way for other 65/70 mm. processes, such as MGM's
Camera 65 ( Ben-Hur, 1959), Ultra Panavision 70 ( Mutiny
on the Bounty, 1962), and Super Technirama 70 ( Spartacus, 1960).

Although widescreen became a new standard, stereo
magnetic sound quickly disappeared as a new technology.
Movie palaces used it as an additional lure for audiences,
but independent exhibitors refused to pay the added costs
involved in equipping their theatres for stereo. At the
same time, audiences accustomed to hearing dialogue
emanate from a central theatre speaker resisted multitrack dialogue, which travelled from theatre speaker to
theatre speaker. Five- and six-track sound, which
accompanied large-format films, provided a more even
distribution of dialogue, and continued to satisfy the
needs of audiences for spectacle, but three- and four-track
sound failed to catch on.

The various production and exhibition technologies
introduced during the 1950s constituted a revolution of
sorts in the nature of the movie-going experience. Audiences were initially overwhelmed by widescreen images
in colour, which were projected on large, curved screens
and accompanied by multi-track stereo magnetic sound.
If the cinema can be said to have begun as a novelty with
the peep-show Kinetoscope and with the projection of
moving images on a large theatre screen for a mass audience, then the explosion of novel technologies in the 1950s
almost amounts to a reinvention of the cinema. For the
first time since the transition-to-sound era, movies spectacularized the motion picture medium, thrilling audiences with displays of its power to move them. The
revolution that took place in the 1950s may well represent
the last chapter in the cinema's attempt, as a medium, to
recapture, through the novelty of its mode of presentation, its original ability to excite spectators.

Bibliography

Belton, John ( 1992), Widescreen Cinema.

Comolli, Jean-Louis ( 1980), ' Machines of the Visible'.

Ogle, Patrick L. ( 1972), ' Technological and Aesthetic Influences
upon the Development of Deep Focus Cinematography in the
United States'.

Salt, Barry ( 1992), Film Style and Technology: Histoty and Analysis.

Animation

WILLIAM MORITZ

THE 'GOLDEN AGE' OF AMERICAN CARTOONS

To satisfy the international craze for Mickey Mouse
(fuelled by a keen merchandizing campaign patterned
after Pat Sullivan's exploitation of Otto Messmer's Felix
the Cat), the Disney studios created 100 cartoons starring
him in the ten years from 1928 to 1937. In the process
they managed to homogenize the character-Ub Iwerks's
original Mickey from Plane Crazy and Steamboat Willie had
wiry limbs and a wicked personality that could torture
cats and ladies, while the later Mickey became rounder,
milder of temperament -- and virtually exhausted his possibilities. Fortunately the Mickey cartoons spawned secondary characters Pluto, Goofy, and Donald Duck who
starred in their own cartoons until the mid-1950s: in fact,
the best of the later Mickey Mouse cartoons, such as the 1935 Band Concert or the 1937 Clock Cleaners, derive as much
energy from Donald and Goofy as from Mickey. Equally
fortunately, Ub Iwerks initiated a second parallel series
of sound cartoons with his 1928 Skeleton Dance: the Silly
Symphonies, which explored lyrical and whimsical
themes in folklore and nature. Free from the gag formula
of regular cartoons, Silly Symphonies gave the Disney staff
the opportunity to experiment and expand their animation skills, and they won Academy Awards regularly:
the full-colour Flowers and Trees ( 1932), Three Little Pigs ( 1933)
with its diverse personality characterization for animal
protagonists, The Tortoise and the Hare ( 1935), Country Cousin
( 1936), The Old Mill ( 1937) with its atmospheric multiplane
depth effects, Ferdinand the Bull ( 1938), and The Ugly Duckling
( 1939).

The technical advances explored in the Silly Symphonies partly arose from a rivalry with the Fleischers,
who, among all the other animation studios that survived
into the sound era, consistently produced excellent cartoons in the early 1930s. Unlike the Disney product, which
tended increasingly to an 'illusion of life' live-action imitation, the earlier Fleischer cartoons revelled in stylization, caricature, unrealistic transformations, elaborate
repetitive cycles, direct address to the audience, and illogical developments which seem inherent, distinctive
properties or potentials of animation. Disney's Alice
seems mundane and leaden beside the Fleischers' Koko,
whose surrealistic escapades allow him to intervene in the
creative process of Modelling ( 1921), or, with his prison
escape in Koko the Convict ( 1926), to bury Manhattan in a

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